U.S. Navy Builder 2nd Class Class John Llewellyn, left, and French Army Marine Caporal-Chef Jasaron Landry renovate a Tongan school during a Pacific Partnership 2013 engineering civic action project.— U.S. Navy

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U.S. Navy Builder 2nd Class Class John Llewellyn, left, and French Army Marine Caporal-Chef Jasaron Landry renovate a Tongan school during a Pacific Partnership 2013 engineering civic action project.
/ U.S. Navy

Since 2006, the U.S. Navy’s annual Pacific Partnership mission has been a hand outstretched to heal — cleft palates, hernias, cataracts. This year, the focus was less on bandages and more on hammers and nails, as 240 construction engineers made up a third of the crew.

The amphibious ship Pearl Harbor returned Monday as the flagship of the 3½-month humanitarian voyage, born out of the world’s response to the deadly 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

This year, highlights included building rainwater storage on the drought-plagued Marshall Islands and renovating schools in rural corners of Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

“We were welcomed in, and it was very difficult to leave, seeing the families on the pier,” said Cmdr. Michael Harris, the Pearl Harbor’s skipper. “I’ve been in the Navy for 26 years; I don’t think I’ve ever had this kind of instant gratification from a mission.”

The trip cost U.S. taxpayers between $15 million and $20 million, according to initial estimates. And, in this era of fiscal belt-tightening, a U.S. Pacific Fleet spokesman said Monday that there’s no decision yet if there will be a Pacific Partnership mission in 2014, or if the San Diego-based hospital ship Mercy would take its usual every-other-year role.

This summer, the regular South American humanitarian mission of the sister hospital ship, Comfort, was scratched in the face of the sweeping federal budget cuts known as sequestration. Sequestration may well continue in 2014, unless Congress can agree on an alternate spending plan that would stave off the automatic cuts.

Still, there’s a case to be made that these trips put the United States one step ahead when the inevitable happens — another devastating earthquake or flood somewhere in Asia, the region that President Barack Obama has pinpointed as the Pentagon’s strategic focus in light of the rise of China and North Korea.

For example, this summer a team of Pacific Partnership divers surveyed 600 acres of underwater terrain, said Lt. Ben Stollerman, a U.S. Navy Seabees officer from San Diego who was the mission’s engineer. The point: To collect data that benefits both the home nation and the United States, should humanitarian aid be needed.

Nine nations partnered with the U.S. Navy to provide people or equipment. They were Australia, France, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, Canada, Malaysia, Japan and Colombia. New Zealand’s amphibious ship Canterbury accompanied the Pearl Harbor.

“Through ongoing missions such as Pacific Partnership, we are able to prepare in calm to response effectively during crisis,” said the U.S. Navy’s mission commander, Capt. Wallace Lovely.

While this Pacific Partnership mission focused on preventive medicine instead of direct care, the doctors and nurses saw more than 18,500 patients for things like eye exams, tooth extractions and skin treatments.

The new focus came at the request of the nations being helped, Navy officials said. They wanted “capacity building,” or the ability to do things themselves, said Pacific Partnership spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Gregory Flores.

That meant health fairs, conferences and workshops, said Lt. Jeff Rockett, a U.S. Navy nurse and the mission’s medical liaison officer. They covered cardiac disease, CPR, patient education and basic good health practices. Rockett called it an exchange of ideas.

“I think they got a better understanding of what resources are available to them,” Rockett said.